Clotworthy Upton, 1st Baron Templetown (1721-1785) was an Irish Peer and landowner. He was the youngest son of Lieutenant Colonel John Upton, of Castle Upton, County Antrim, and Mary Upton. He served as Clerk Comptroller to Augusta Dowager Princess of Wales, 1761-72, and succeeded to the family estates in 1768 following the deaths of both of his brothers. Upton was an Irish landowner and owned a group of estates with enslaved people in Grenada and Dominica. In 1769, he married Elizabeth Boughton (1745-1823), an artist known for her work with the potter Josiah Wedgwood, and a Lady of the Bedchamber to King George II’s daughter, Princess Amelia. They went on a joint Grand Tour, 1773-75. On their return, Upton was made Baron Templetown in 1776 and assumed his seat in the Irish House of Lords. He died in 1785 and was succeeded by his eldest son, John Upton.

Castle Upton dates to the thirteenth century when it was used as a priory for the Knights Templar. Substantial additions were made in the early seventeenth century by Sir Humphrey Norton, resulting in a quadrangular castle known as ‘Castle Norton’, with two round towers at the northeast and southwest corners. The castle was sold to Captain Henry Upton in 1625 and renamed Castle Upton. It was inherited in 1768 by Clotworthy Upton, later 1st Lord Templetown after the death of his brother, the Rt Hon Arthur Upton.

In 1783, Templetown commissioned Adam to make designs for additions to the castle. Lady Templetown moved in fashionable court circles, and it might have been through her associates that Adam was introduced. The surviving Adam office drawings comprises a series of plans and two elevations. At this point, the castle comprised two quadrangular ranges with the southwest tower in between. Adam’s coloured wash suggests that he was not responsible for the addition of this west range, however, this is not definite. The irregularity of the windows in the west range, along with the differing floor levels and proposed additions in pink wash would suggest that he was dealing with an existing structure.

Most of the plans have fliers providing two different options for a proposed bow for the client to choose from. Adam proposed to add a porch to the first floor, a rear bow (with or without a staircase) and an additional staircase to each floor, as well as a series of room partitions along with a chimneypiece and windows to the rear of the second floor. Externally, Adam added conical roofs to the existing towers, as well as machicolated cornices, crenellations and corbelled bartizans with pepper-pot roofs.

Upton died in 1785, and it is not clear if all of Adam’s work was completed by this time. Lady Templetown remained in charge of the estate whilst her son was still a minor and in 1788, she instructed Adam to make further designs for additions to the castle, as well as a new stables and offices to the northeast.

The surviving drawings show that Adam then proposed an east extension to the castle. This is shown in a ground plan which helpfully shows the changes Adam had already carried out in 1783 in black wash, along with the proposed east extension and stables and offices (SM Adam volume 48/35). There is also a preliminary elevation of the house relating to the ground plan that this author has identified (SM Adam volume 1/71) along with an elevation for an alternative design (SM Adam volume 48/28). Neither of these proposed extensions were executed. However, the proposed stables and offices were executed almost completely to Adam’s designs in 1788-89.

The extensive stables and offices comprised a large quadrangular range enclosing two internal courtyards, with octagonal corner blocks adjoining rows of rectangular ranges, all in the castle style. The offices met the general needs of any country house, along with additional rooms including stores for potatoes. Rowan suggests that the design for the south entrance front was based on the medieval Netherbow Port of Edinburgh which was demolished in 1764 and engraved in William Maitland’s History of Edinburgh(1753). The stables were built in textured local stone.

Robert Adam also made designs for a mausoleum dedicated to Arthur Upton within the existing burial ground near the house. The surviving drawings are undated, however, several sources (including King) state that it was built in 1789. The design was for a large square mausoleum with extensive decoration. Only the proposed front was executed to Adam’s designs; the latter three sides remained plain in appearance. The overall size of the mausoleum was also built to smaller dimensions. The inscription in the design states that the mausoleum was commissioned by the ‘Honble Mrs Upton’ and a dedication inside the executed structure confirms this was Arthur's wife, Sarah (later Countess of Farnham) and not his sister-in-law Lady Templetown as suggested by Musson.

By the early-nineteenth century, an additional range and tower had been added to the north of the house. Rowan suggests that these might be an Adam addition, owing to the ‘Adamesque’ features of the exterior. However, the Revd James Boyle states in Ordnance Survey Memoirs (1838) that ‘in 1798 an addition of a wing containing some very fine apartments was made by Lord Templetown on the north side of the Castle’ which would date these additions to after both Robert and James Adam’s time. The house was apparently broken into and plundered in the same year and the Templetowns did not return until the 1830s when they made extensive renovations and additions to the house to designs by Edward Blore.

Blore’s extensive remodelling included modifications to the windows to include mullions and transoms, adding drip mouldings, and replacing the classical interiors with neo-Elizabethan decoration. A number of drawings relating to these alterations are in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection.

After the First World War, the castle was sold separately from the estate and converted into a farmhouse in the 1920s for Henderson Smith. The conical roofs, bartizans and crenellations were removed and the roof was replaced with a simple pitched roof. The roof of the north wing was also removed, exposing the retaining walls to the elements. The house was later renovated and restored in the late-twentieth century and the stables have been converted into houses and flats.

Literature:
A. Bolton, The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, Volume II, Index, 1922, p. 6; A. Rowan, ‘Georgian Castles in Ireland – I’, Quarterly Bulletin of the Irish Georgian Society, Volume VII, January – March 1963, pp. 13-16; C. E. B. Brett, Buildings of County Antrim, 1996, pp. 73-75; J. Musson, ‘Castle Upton Co Antrim, The Home of Mr and Mrs Daniel Kinahan’, Country Life, October 31 1996, pp. 64-69; D. King, The Complete Works of Robert & James Adam and Unbuilt Adam, Volume 1, 2001, pp. 220, 223, 325-7, 359-60; Volume 2, p. 179; M. O’Sullivan, ‘Elizabeth Upton [nee Boughton], Lady Templetown (1745-1823)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2021, online [accessed 5 February 2024]; UCL, Legacies of British Slavery Database, online [accessed 5 February 2024]

Louisa Catt, 2024